How Artifacts Changed The Telling Of Sept. 11 Attacks

Before the fires were extinguished or the cleanups began, archivists from the Smithsonian museums had already started collecting artifacts from the sites of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Thirteen years later, Alima Bucciantini, an assistant professor of public history at Duquesne University, wants to know what kind of impact the immediate exhibition of these objects had on the telling of the story of 9/11.

“There was no time to process what had happened,” she said. “So they collected objects before we even knew what was important. And this is really unique in the museum world.”

Archivists were dispatched to New York, Virginia and Shanksville, Pa. as early as Oct. 6, 2001 and picked up what they could, leading to some ethical issues—do you collect personal items or return them to the families who lost loved ones?

“Once they had these objects,” Bucciantini said, “they had to then trace them … and a lot of these objects didn’t end up in the permanent collection.”

Many items were returned to the families, while others were loaned to the museum.

The Smithsonian National Museum of American History unveiled its temporary 9/11 exhibit one year after the attacks, and according to Bucciantini, the display was in such demand that it toured across the country.

“9/11 was a really unique moment in time and people interacted with it with material objects in a way that we hadn’t before,” she said.

Immediately following the crash of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Bucciantini said the public brought their own objects to the site to create “temporary shrines,” and the Smithsonian was faced with another decision: Do you leave them or take them?

“In Pennsylvania, we’re close to things that happened physically — geographically,” she said. “But even people that aren’t close seem to be close to the story of it and they want to be close to the objects as well.”

According to Bucciantini, the artifacts have sparked public interest and turned the events of 9/11 into an “American boogeyman story.”

“It becomes a ritual,” she said. “It makes it safe. It takes it out of the realm of something that is likely to actually threaten you and makes it, kind of, in the safe past. [It’s] a story that we tell each other, a tradition, rather than something that is actually part of the scary present.”

The story of what happened in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is difficult to fathom for most adults. So how do you explain it to children?

That’s the question the new Flight 93 National Memorial Junior Rangers Program hopes to address, using two years of research into how children deal with traumatic events.

On Saturday, the program and a specially-designed children’s activity booklet for visitors ages six to twelve will be unveiled during “Junior Ranger Day.” The day will also feature a Children’s Discovery Table where kids can make their own tributes.

The Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa. will honor the 40 crash victims of United Flight 93 on the 12th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Events begin 3 p.m. Tuesday as crews break ground on a visitor center. The 6,800 square-foot facility will try to tell the full story of Flight 93 and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The building is expected to be completed September 2015. The Flight 93 National Memorial Capital Campaign announced it raised $40 million dollars to complete the national memorial.

A pair of local universities will mark the 12th anniversary of the attacks of September 11th in very public but very different ways.

Chatham University will gather Wednesday afternoon on the quad for a moment of silence, a short speech from the Dean of Student Affairs office, remarks from a representative of the Wounded Warrior Project and a performance of the National Anthem by the Chatham University Choir.

The goal of the event is not only to remember the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2011, but also to salute the growing number of students on campus who are also veterans.